Chapter 3
If it wasn't for the shrieking that made Kaia jolt awake, she was sure that she could have slept the entire day away. She wasn't sure if it was the hangover or the heaviness of having used her cursed moon technique the other night, but her body had been so unbelievably exhausted.
Kaia sat up in bed, hair falling across her face and her old t-shirt hanging off her shoulders as she got tangled in her blankets.
"What! What is it!" Kaia shouted.
"Why is there a curse in here! There shouldn't be a curse on school grounds!" Shoko cried out.
Okay, look. Kaia hadn't even noticed, to be honest. Spending every single night (and many mornings) of your entire life waking up to a dead little girl staring at you had a tendency to make you highly desensitized to it. And Kaia was fully aware of the irony of this. She knew that getting desensitized and getting too comfortable around her curse that was without a doubt going to kill her one day was bad. She got that, okay? But it didn't change the fact that Kaia had woken up to see the girl in the corner of her bedroom every single night from the time she was five years old. So when she woke up to Shoko's screams and realized what the cause was, Kaia just yawned and lied back down.
"Sorry about that. She's fine. Just go back to sleep," Kaia said after she identified her curse by her bloodied blonde hair and dirty white dress.
"Are you CRAZY? I'm not going back to sleep with a curse in here!"
Kaia opened one eye and looked at where Shoko was still gaping at the curse. The curse didn't acknowledge Shoko at all and instead, her black eyes bore into Kaia from where her back was pressed against the far wall. Dawn had already started to creep in and it bathed their dorm in pretty blue light as the sun started to rise. Kaia didn't check what time it was, but she figured she still had an hour or so left to sleep and she was determined to get it.
"She's fine," Kaia said again. "She's not gonna do anything. She's just gonna stand there and stare at me."
"Do you hear yourself right now?" Shoko whispered harshly. "That is the curse that snapped your wrist clean in half!"
Kaia sat up abruptly and scowled at her roommate.
"Because I got too close to her! She's fine! She's been standing there since midnight and hasn't done anything to you, has she?"
Shoko's jaw dropped.
"She's been there since midnight? Kaia! That is not normal!"
"Oh my God," Kaia groaned, letting her head fall back into her pillow. She rubbed her palms over her eyes. So much for sleeping in.
She focused her cursed energy and tasted flames on the back of her tongue. Despite the exhaustion she felt, she pushed herself up so she sat straight in her bed and breathed out blue flames to engulf the little girl until she disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. Once the curse was gone, Kaia threw herself back into bed and pulled the covers up over her head.
"Two cursed techniques?" Shoko asked.
"Yeah, and thank God for that because I don't use the other one and I don't ever plan on using it."
"Kaia, I think—"
"SLEEP!" Kaia shouted. She squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed deeper into the blankets. She could still probably squeeze in thirty minutes or so before she had to—
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Kaia whimpered at the sound of the alarm while Shoko just laughed and apologized.
So much for that.
"I'll be picking up the rest of the first years today, so I want you three to complete this mission quickly and efficiently. Understood?" Yaga instructed. He crossed his arms and divided his gaze equally between Gojo, Geto, and Ieiri. Gojo leaned back in the little desk of the small classroom and grinned.
"We're always quick," he said.
Yaga very obviously was not impressed. His gaze focused solely on where Gojo sat and his eyes narrowed.
"I heard you were giving Murakami a tough time," he said.
"I was doing no such thing," he said right away. "Just a little teasing. It's practically a rite of passage around here."
"Hey, is there a way to permanently get rid of her curse? I woke up this morning to it just standing there and it freaked me the hell out," Ieiri interrupted. She twirled a lock of short hair around her finger and shivered to herself.
Gojo shot a look at Geto. That was an interesting development.
"So there is a curse," Geto hummed. He leaned his chin on his hand as looked curiously at Yaga, waiting to see what their teacher had to say.
"There is a curse," Yaga confirmed with a head nod. "From what Kaito Murakami has told me, there is nothing to be done about it. It appears every night at midnight even if it's been exorcised. I'm sorry you have to deal with that while you two are roommates, but according to Kaito, the curse doesn't do anything as long as you don't get close to it."
"I think I exorcised it the night Kaia and her sister were attacked," Geto said. "It takes the form of a little girl. I thought it was odd because it didn't look like a typical curse, but yet that's exactly what it was. It's rather weak too. Easy to exorcise."
"I don't care if it's weak. I care because she was not even remotely concerned about it. She was just going to leave it there. That's freaky," Ieiri said, shivering once again.
"Well, I'm sure being stalked by a curse every day of your life has desensitized the girl. I'll need to work on that with her that so it doesn't kill her prematurely," Yaga said. He nodded at Ieiri. "You won't have to share a room for much longer, but as I said, it's to my understanding that the curse won't do anything to you as long as you don't get too close. Be aware of it should you get up and wander at night."
Gojo adjusted his sunglasses. He was intrigued by the first year, that was for sure. It wasn't every day he came across someone whose cursed energy glowed a different color, but he couldn't deny the fact that she was weak. Too scared to properly learn how to use her most powerful technique and too lofty in her expectations for him to believe that she would ever fully utilize her second cursed technique. All in all, he was mainly interested in her because he wanted to see how much of a massive disappointment she would turn out to be.
A Murakami with the Cursed Moon Technique was almost as valuable as a Gojo with the Limitless technique. And she was too scared to use it.
What a waste of talent.
Kaia wasn't too proud to admit that she was a bit disappointed that she was the only girl in a class of four first-years. She had hoped to meet another girl, maybe start a little friend group the way Maha did, when in reality, she was stuck with three idiots.
There was Yu Haibara, a nice kid with short dark hair who smiled a bit too much. He was energetic and loud and proud to be a sorcerer. He talked a lot about how he wanted to be a sorcerer because he was glad that there was something he could do that no one else could. He was nice enough, but his energetic nature was a little exhausting to be around. Then there was Kiyotaka Ijichi. He was a pain in the ass and a wet blanket. His hair was black and badly parted and he wore a pair of thick glasses. His first impression on Kaia was that he took himself way too goddamn seriously and needed to take a drink or something to learn how the hell to chill out. It definitely was not good for someone to be so stressed all the time. Of her new classmates, she got along least with him.
Finally, there was Kento Nanami. His hair was ash blond and long enough that he had to push his fringe to the side and he wore a very serious expression. Unlike everyone else (including Kaia) Nanami was scouted by the school prior to admission. He was the only one in his family with his abilities and he had such an overwhelming amount of cursed energy that Kaia could feel it the moment they met. She was most intrigued by him and his potential, but he was another wet blanket and difficult to get a read on.
They were an interesting dynamic and Kaia didn't know how well they would all work together, and she wondered if Yaga thought that too, because upon gathering them all, he assigned them a mission.
The group of them stood outside a small hospital on the outskirts of the city. From the outside, the building looked somewhat okay (if you disregarded the obvious cursed energy exuding from it). It was intact and none of the windows or doors were broken, but the landscape was a mess. Everything from the grass to the bushes to the trees was overgrown. The grass reached as high as Kaia's knees in some places and plants pushed through the concrete sidewalks that led up to the building. That combined with the fast-setting sun made the hospital look like something out of a bad horror movie.
Which truthfully, was pretty on-brand for jujutsu sorcerers.
"There are several low-grade curses inside the hospital. Your mission is to completely exorcise them and return here in thirty minutes. Think of this as a test for your abilities and a way for me to gauge your individual progress and control. Be prepared to work together, if necessary," Yaga said.
They all nodded before Kaia, Nanami, and Haibara started to walk to the building. They only made it a few steps before Kaia noticed that they were missing Ijichi and she paused, halfway to the door, and looked at where Yaga and Ijichi were standing.
"Are you coming or what, Ijichi?" Kaia asked. Both Nanami and Haibara stopped on their way to the hospital, seemingly wondering the same thing.
"I'm not much of a fighter. My specialty lies in curtains and using shikigami to support other sorcerers," he said, shoulders pulled taut.
Kaia narrowed her eyes and planted a hand on her hip.
"A jujutsu sorcerer who can't fight? What the hell is that?" she blurted before she could think better of it.
"Aw, you don't need to be so mean, Murakami," Haibara said.
"Speaking of. Kaia, I think you'll find that you could use some practice with hand-to-hand combat. Why don't you pair up with Nanami? You could learn a thing or two from him," Yaga said calmly, not at all bothered by her attitude.
"What!" she snapped.
"Enough. Let's go already," Nanami said with a heavy sigh.
Kaia rolled her eyes and begrudgingly followed her classmates inside.
The inside of the hospital did not at all match the outside. Where the outside was unkempt, it was still intact. The inside? Not so much. There were papers from records littered across cracked tile floors, the stench of antiseptic and rot lingering in the air, and no working lights. There were a few flickering hallway ones from a generator most likely powering them from the basement, but it wasn't consistent, so the building was dark all around with the exception of random hallways with flickering fluorescent lights. It was very reminiscent of every single horror film Kaia had watched growing up. And she had watched a lot.
"The obvious strategy is splitting up," Nanami said once the three of them walked about halfway down one of the hallways with a flickering light.
"Couldn't agree more," Kaia said. "I can go to the basement, Haibara can get the ground floor, Nanami can get the second floor and we can all meet up on the third floor when we're done."
"Yaga said you should be with Nanami though," Haibara said with a sheepish smile.
Kaia's eye twitched and she growled out a low, "it was a recommendation. Not an instruction."
"Do what you want, Murakami. But you can be the one to explain to Yaga why you didn't listen to him," Nanami said, not even looking at her and walking over to a stairwell nearby.
"Oh my—fine. Whatever. Nanami and I will go to the basement then," Kaia grumbled. She marched over the stairwell and scowled at Haibara. "We'll meet on the second floor instead."
So they split up, Haibara handling the first floor while Kaia and Nanami handled the basement. The basement gave Kaia the creeps though. The walls and floor were made of gray cement that was coated in graffiti and there were countless abandoned wheelchairs, hospital beds, and surgical instruments littered around. She positively hated it and stuck close to Nanami, more out of disgust than fear.
"Are you seriously afraid right now?" Nanami asked after a few minutes, catching onto the fact that she wouldn't let him get more than a few feet away from her.
"It's creepy!" Kaia said right away, feeling her lips forming into a familiar pout.
He craned his neck over his shoulder and give her a quick glance and she watched a small smirk come over his face.
"A jujutsu sorcerer who's afraid of a cursed location? What the hell is that?"
"Don't use my own words against me," she said right away.
He laughed gently under his breath and said an easy, "the opening was too good to pass up."
She would have said something witty in response, but she became acutely aware of a curse slinking out of the wall directly to her left. Kaia didn't even fully turn to face the curse. She didn't have to. She was in an enclosed space made purely of concrete. She could let loose without having to worry about collateral.
She activated her cursed technique and curled the fingers on her right hand into a circle that she held to her lips to better control the flow of blue fire she breathed from her lungs that engulfed the curse. It was weak. Weaker than the curse of the little girl that stalked her, and it disintegrated in black smoke in only a few seconds.
"Boring," she said with a sigh.
"How well do those flames work on stronger curses?" Nanami asked as he walked further into the basement.
"Eh, probably fine. I've never exorcised anything much higher than a grade 3. Although now that I think about it, I exorcised a grade 2 one time in training just fine with it. Though it sapped quite a bit of my energy," she said, still following close by.
"I see. And your flames don't burn you?"
"Nah. They burn my clothes though."
"So you've never really had to fight hand-to-hand?" Nanami asked. He disappeared into a storage room and Kaia lingered in the doorway, her eyes searching the open space for other curses to emerge.
"Not really," she muttered, feeling a little embarrassed. "I can spar though. I know the basics."
"Mm," was all Nanami said.
She was going to ask him what exactly his stupid little hum meant but didn't get the chance because suddenly the floor was caving in from above and Haibara was falling from the ceiling directly onto her.
She groaned under his bodyweight and coughed the dust and debris out her face. She waved her hand in front of her face to try and see what the hell was going on when her eyes connected with a curse grinning at her from the hole in the ceiling.
"Haibara! Get off!" she groaned, planting her hands on his side and pushing as hard as she could.
"Ughh," he whined. "Sorry, Murakami. I don't know what hap—"
"HAIBARA! MOVE!" she shouted, cupping her mouth with both of her hands and reenforcing her lungs with cursed energy so she could breathe a wave of fire of the grinning, fat, grotesque curse that was jumping down to land on top of them.
She wasn't fast enough. The curse that looked like a goddamn mountain troll with a hairy beard and fat gut was about to crush her skull like a grape. She embedded as much cursed energy as she could into her attack and prayed it would be enough to exorcise it before it crushed both of them beneath its weight. But then there was a flash of a black uniform and blonde hair that clouded her vision moments before she felt something wet and more debris fall on her face and body.
When Kaia wiped her eyes, she saw the empty hole in the ceiling and the remains of the curse on her uniform. She finally was able to shove Haibara off her and push herself off the ground, groaning as she wiped the blood and debris off her clothes, face, and hair.
"Haibara, I'm gonna kill you! When I say move, you move!"
"I was trying! I had the wind knocked out of me," Haibara said with a pout of his own. She scoffed and looked at Nanami. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his broad chest, one hand holding a wide, blunt blade that was wrapped in a white cloth with black seals on it.
"Thanks," Kaia said. She wiped some purple blood from her face and sighed. "Did you have to cut it open right above me though?"
"I suppose I could have let it squash you instead?" he quipped.
"Right. Right. Sorry," she said immediately.
"I don't know what happened. The floor didn't seem unstable?" Haibara said, coming to join them and rubbing dust out of his eyes.
"I'm guessing a curse is to blame for that," Nanami said.
"Yeah, bastard probably—aw shit."
Kaia stopped herself when six curses started crawling out of the hole in the ceiling. She could feel that they were only grade 4s, maybe a grade 3 at the absolute most, but their numbers in the enclosed area of the basement made it a tricky fight. In another situation, Kaia would have been able to scream like a banshee and manipulate the flames into engulfing the entire room until the curses turned to ash where they stood. It wouldn't have caused Kaia any damage, but she couldn't risk hurting Nanami or Haibara. If she did that, she would have killed them too and she sure as hell couldn't let that happen.
She'd have to use a more targeted approach with more potent and directed fire. A technique that was useful but depleted quite a bit of her cursed energy… Cursed energy that had inefficiently been spent just moments ago when she was desperate to exorcise the curse that had been about to jump on her and Haibara.
"Time for the real test," Haibara said with nervous laughter before springing into a fight with a nearby curse.
Nanami followed suit and without other options, Kaia did the same.
"…Murakami, where are your clothes?" Yaga deadpanned, staring in disbelief at where his young student was standing between Kento Nanami and Yu Haibara without a shirt or bra on with her arms crossed over her chest. She at least still had her pants on, but he could see they were so severely burned that they were far too low on her hips so that they were barely hanging on by a damned thread. The three of them were covered in what Yaga originally thought was dust, but was now realized was actually ash. Haibara had some soot on his cheeks and chin, while Nanami's light blond hair looked like salt and pepper with the amount of soot and ash in it. His face was not as streaked in the stuff as Kaia's was, but he certainly looked like he had just spent his afternoon inside of a chimney.
"They got burnt," she said without even a flush of embarrassment. She held her chin high and looked him right in the eye as she spoke.
Yaga put a hand to his forehead in disbelief and shook his head. Apparently, Kaito hadn't been kidding when he said his daughter could learn to use some decent control.
"Will one of you idiots give the girl a damn jacket?" he said with an exasperated sigh.
"Why are you so annoyed? We exorcised the curses just like you said," Kaia asked, accepting Nanami's black jacket and turning around while she put it on and buttoned it up.
"We got ambushed," Haibara said before Yaga could respond. "It was partially my fault, Sensei. There was this big hole in the floor and I fell into the basement and all these curses started crawling out of it. We were doing fine and managed to exorcise all of them but then the one curse multiplied into what? Twenty or so curses? They were super weak, but it was a lot so Kaia went banshee on them and set the whole basement on fire."
"Shut up, Haibara!" Kaia hissed, elbowing him in the ribs once she had Nanami's jacket buttoned up.
"You set the entire basement on fire when your classmates were in there?" Yaga asked. He leveled the firmest stare he could at the young girl and she snorted with a cross of her arms.
"Of course not! I told them to get out first."
"Then why are they covered in ash?" Yaga deadpanned.
It was the first time the girl's cheeks flushed.
"It's just ash… It's not like they're covered in burns," she mumbled, averting her eyes by looking to the side.
Yaga scowled and turned his attention to Nanami. He would get a decent response out of that one, he was sure of it.
Nanami, now in a plain white undershirt, just shrugged.
"There were papers and medical records everywhere in there. They caught fire and that must have been what did it."
Yaga didn't buy it for a fucking second. He looked at Haibara, but the chatty boy was carefully whistling and looking away as well.
"Fine. Don't tell me then," he said after he'd taken a moment to temper his frustration. "Murakami. Report tomorrow at 4pm for detention."
"What! Why! We exorcised every curse in there under thirty minutes just like you said!" she argued.
"Because you put your classmates' lives at risk when you clearly should have just run away. With a dangerous technique like yours, control should be the thing you value above all else. You could easily kill a fellow sorcerer or an innocent bystander in any other situation. I'll keep giving you detention until I think that you're able to wrap your stubborn head around the concept of control and discipline. Understood?"
Yaga doubted she realized she was doing it, but her lower lip just barely jutted out in a very childish pout as she crossed her arms and scowled at him. Yaga never had any children and he didn't plan on having any just yet, but he hoped that one day when he had a child, they wouldn't be like the stubborn little girl that Kaia Murakami was. He prayed they would be more level-headed like Nanami.
"I asked if you understood," he said when she didn't answer him.
She took her time before answering with a bitter, "understood."
Kaia had just showered all the soot and blood off of her and was sulking in her room when Shoko returned. She clearly had just gotten back from a mission, obvious by the tiny little cuts on her face, but she smiled at where Kaia was lounging in her bed with a magazine on her chest.
"Aw, what's wrong? You look like an angry little kitten," Shoko said with a giggle.
"I got detention," Kaia deadpanned. She felt so pathetic but she didn't care. She was pissed off about it. She saved her classmates and completed the task just like Yaga said, and this was the thanks she got? It was bullshit.
"I heard." Shoko laughed. "Don't let it bug you. Gojo gets detention all the time and he's one of the strongest sorcerers alive."
"Wow. That does not make me feel even a little better."
"Aw," Shoko cooed. She sat down on her own bed and stretched her arms high above her head until her back cracked. "You need some cheering up. Some of my friends are stopping by the school tomorrow night. Wanna hang out with us? That should cheer you right up."
Kaia pursed her lips and gave it some thought. The thought of hanging out with a bunch of strangers left a bit of a bad taste in her mouth after what happened at the bonfire with Maha. Yet at the same time, Kaia did come to the school hoping to make a group of close friends. So maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.
Speaking of, she really needed to call Maha.
"Yeah, that would be cool. Thanks, Shoko," Kaia said. She stood up from the bed and grabbed Nanami's freshly washed jacket, no longer covered in soot and ash. "I'm gonna go give this back to Nanami. I'll be back."
Shoko waved and started to light a cigarette once Kaia was on her way out. She checked her watch and guessed that Nanami would either be in the cafeteria or in the common room. She opted to check the common room first, and if he wasn't there, she could just grab dinner in the cafeteria after.
Kaia reached the common room a few minutes later and found that it was empty, save for one of Yaga's cursed corpses that was wandering around and patrolling the school. Kaia scowled at the little blue teddy bear with boxing gloves and wondered if tomorrow's detention would be filled with having to fight the damn thing.
Deciding to take advantage of the empty common room, Kaia walked over to one of the phones on a table behind the empty couches. She sat down at the table and dialed her house's phone number by heart and waited for either Maha or one of her parents to answer.
"Hello?" a voice greeted after two rings.
"Maha? Is that you?" Kaia asked.
"Kaia!" Maha greeted. Kaia felt the corner of her lips tug into a gentle smile at the sound of Maha's familiar voice. "How are you! How's the school? Have you met all of your classmates yet? Tell me everything!"
"You're in an awfully good mood," Kaia noted, letting herself laugh softly. "Mom and Dad must not be home yet."
"That would be correct," Maha said. "Let me enjoy my last few days of freedom. I know your teacher said they would be coming home soon but I haven't heard from them at all, so maybe they won't back be as quickly as he thought."
"Maybe," Kaia said. She thought that was weird. Even when their parents went on long missions in the past, they would always call when they could, usually first thing in the morning.
"So what's going on? Tell me everything!"
"Well, I got detention today," Kaia mumbled.
"Of course you did," Maha said, sighing as she did. "What happened?"
Kaia recounted the tale as best as she could. Explained that she had to set an entire room on fire to get everyone out of there and that she'd miscalculated the amount of cursed energy she needed. Explained that she ended up getting a little too overzealous to the point where the flames crept up the narrow staircase where Nanami and Haibara were trying to get out of the basement and that Kaia had to use her body as a human shield to hold off the flames. How Nanami and Haibara were real close to getting cooked alive because she was an idiot who didn't know how to control her cursed technique. How the heat had been enough to burn all the debris in the stairwell and that it rained soot on them from above.
By the end of the explanation, Kaia's head hung between her shoulders in shame. God, her parents would be so disappointed in her lack of control.
"Oh, Kaia. I'm sorry. That must be really hard," Maha said gently. "You'll get the hang of it. You're at a school with strong classmates and even stronger mentors. I'm sure Mom and Dad struggled when they were younger too."
Kaia didn't know why, but her eyes felt hot all of the sudden.
"Yeah." She cleared her throat. "Anything new with you? See Riku lately?"
"Nah nothing new. He's been kinda freaked out lately and has been dodging my calls."
Kaia glared at the grain of the wood on the table.
"Want me to kick his ass?"
"No, that's okay. It just sucks, you know?"
Kaia didn't know. She had never dated anyone before and she wasn't sure she wanted to based on some of the things Maha said. It sounded like a real pain in the ass to constantly worry about some idiot boyfriend who couldn't keep it in his pants while forcing you to hang out with his creepy friends at a stupid high school party.
"Yeah, I get it," Kaia lied.
"It's not a big deal though. I've been keeping busy with looking at colleges and places to visit before I enroll. Did you know that in Trinidad they make steelpan drums with old oil drums? Isn't that crazy?"
Kaia laughed, "seriously? You want to go to Trinidad, Maha? That's so random."
"And Tobago. The beaches are gorgeous there. I hear the food is pretty interesting too. I think I might want to plan a trip before I enroll in college, you know? Just take some time for myself. I'll just fly into Port of Spain and do some sightseeing around the island."
Kaia heard voices and footsteps getting closer to the common room and looked up to see two tall shadows approaching from the nearby hall.
"Hey, I'm sorry. I gotta go. Someone else wants to use the phone. I'll call you later?"
"Oh." Maha sounded disappointed. "Yeah, sure. Stay safe, Kaia. Love you."
Kaia watched and held in a groan as Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto entered the room.
"Love you more. Bye."
She hung up and grabbed Nanami's jacket, eager to head for the cafeteria before Gojo could say anything stupid, but she didn't even make it across the room before he opened his fat mouth.
He had one hell of a bruise on the side of his face, creeping along his cheekbone and up to one of his eyes hidden behind his black sunglasses. Kaia couldn't help but stare in shock that someone managed to land a hit on "one of the strongest" sorcerers and quirked an eyebrow.
"What happened to you?" she asked before she could think better of it.
"Just today's mission. It's nothing serious," Geto said. He had a similar bruise along his jaw but still smiled kindly at Kaia. "Ieiri hasn't figured out bruises yet, so we have to walk around like this for a few days."
"Heard you got detention, Murakami," Gojo drawled with a grin.
She shouldn't have said anything.
"Bite me, Gojo," she snapped. Her eyes flickered to Geto. "Either of you seen Nanami? He's the blond first year."
"I think I saw him in the cafeteria," Geto said. "Aside from the detention, how did your first mission go? I heard from Ijichi that it must have gotten a little crazy."
Kaia couldn't help but narrow her eyes at him. Geto hadn't been a jerk to her like Gojo had. In fact, he'd been nothing but kind to her. But he was always side-by-side with Gojo and clearly the two were good friends. And Kaia wasn't sure she trusted someone who was buddy-buddy with Satoru Gojo of all people.
"It was fine. Although I don't know why Ijichi said anything about it since he didn't even go inside," she admitted.
Geto laughed. "I figured. He said his specialty lies in curtains. Not fighting. Couldn't imagine Yaga would send him in to fight a bunch of curses if he can't hold his own. I heard you were very impressive."
She didn't know why but she felt her cheeks flush. She looked to the side and fiddled with the soft material of Nanami's jacket.
"Right. Well… Bye."
She hurried out of there and practically ran to the cafeteria. By the time she got there she was damn near out of breath and could feel her heart racing as she slid into the seat directly across from Nanami and beside Haibara.
"What's gotten into you? Why do you look so stressed?" Haibara said.
"I don't know. I think I'm just tired from today," she said quickly, already wanting to change the subject and not think of the way Geto smiled so sweetly and complimented her. She slid Nanami's jacket across the table and he nodded in acknowledgment but didn't say anything, too busy eating his dinner.
Figuring that now might as well be as good a time as ever since she had both of their attention, Kaia cleared her throat and carefully divided her gaze between the two boys.
"I wanted to apologize to you guys for today. Yaga is right. I need to have better control of my technique and I'm going to work on that so I don't put either of you in danger ever again." She looked at Nanami and was surprised to see him watching her carefully instead of picking at his food and for some reason, it made her feel all the more guilty. "I… I'm just really sorry, Guys."
She waited for them to berate her, tease her, tell her that she screwed up. Waited for them to talk to her the way Gojo did or maybe even call her weak.
She got none of that.
Instead, she got Haibara patting her on the back with a big smile on his face.
"What are you talking about? Your technique got us out of there and you protected us from any serious danger. Who cares if we looked like chimney sweeps for a few hours? I thought it was awesome," he said, the smile never once wavering from his face.
Kaia's mouth felt dry, suddenly speechless.
Nanami smirked at her, setting his utensils down, and looked her right in the eye.
"Apology accepted. You're strong. You'll be a great teammate, Kaia."
Kaia. Not Murakami. Not an unwanted nickname or anything else. Just her first name. Just Kaia.
She grinned, warmth spreading through her chest.
"Thanks, Guys."
*Author's note*
Just a note: I'm a manga reader (I read the Viz translation) who has watched most of the anime. I say that because terms differ between the manga and anime. For example, in the manga, they use the term "curtain" while in the anime, they use the term "veil." I think I use both interchangeably throughout the whole story, so just be aware of that. If you read something and you're not sure wtf I'm talking about just let me know!
As always, drop and any all feedback with a review. Thanks!